Gay marriage and same sex parents have found new support from President Obama. But Christian groups are pointing to scientific studies that claim homosexual parents do not function as well as heterosexual parents.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, President Obama wants the Supreme Court to overturn a gay marriage ban. This past week, President Obama filed a legal brief with the Supreme Court that discussed Proposition 8, the California legislation from 2008 that banned gay marriage. According to the Examiner, as part of this legal brief the Obama administration also defended gay parents:

“As an initial matter, no sound basis exists for concluding that same-sex couples who have committed to marriage are anything other than fully capable of responsible parenting and child rearing. The weight of the scientific literature strongly supports the view that same-sex parents are just as capable as opposite-sex parents.”

This statement marks a dramatic policy shift for President Obama even on a personal level. According to ThinkProgress, back in 2008 Obama’s position on gay marriage was very different:

“I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian…it is also a sacred union. God is in the mix.”

This might be why the legal brief stops shorts of asking the Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of marriage bans beyond the context of Proposition 8. This has led the New York Times to say that the legal brief falls short:

“We don’t know why the administration did not take that step. Perhaps it was to allow Obama to go on asserting that the issue of same-sex marriage should generally be left up to the states. We hope the justices recognize the broader truth that the Constitution does not tolerate denying gay people the right to wed in any state.”

According to The Christian Post, some Christian groups are pointing to Dr. Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, who conducted the largest, most rigorously controlled study in history and found that kids of same-sex parents are unlikely to be as well adjusted compared to children of heterosexual families:

“The results of the NFSS [National Family Structures Study] research revealed that the ‘no differences’ claim-the claim that children raised by parents in gay or lesbian relationships fared no worse and in some cases better than children raised by intact biological parents-was not true. On the contrary, the children of these households, on average, did worse than children raised by their biological, still-married parents.”

Another study by Dr. Douglas Allen claims kids of straight parents perform better in school than children reared by LGBT parents. Regnerus summarized his findings for an article in Slate, writing:

“Even after including controls for age, race, gender, and things like being bullied as a youth, or the gay-friendliness of the state in which they live, such respondents were more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law, report more male and female sex partners, more sexual victimization, and were more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood family life, among other things. Why such dramatic differences? I can only speculate, since the data are not poised to pinpoint causes. One notable theme among the adult children of same-sex parents, however, is household instability, and plenty of it. The children of fathers who have had same-sex relationships fare a bit better, but they seldom reported living with their father for very long, and never with his partner for more than three years.”

The Examiner points out that the “study was subjected to a [University of Texas] review for possible scientific flaws [and] Regnerus was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.” American Thinker says that “its politically incorrect conclusions, based on data from nearly 15,000 adults,” led to accusations of gay-bashing and scientific misconduct.

But even a bisexual father named Robert Lopez says that Mark Regnerus’ “tone was respectful, his curiosity well intended, and his courage commendable.” Lopez was the son of lesbian and this is how he described his reaction to the scientific work of Mark Renerus:

“Of course it is hard to be raised in a household that is unusual and unlike the homes of one’s peers. Just like kids raised in orthodox religious households, kids who are home-schooled, foster kids, or kids who are so wealthy that they are reared by paid nannies, the children of homosexuals have atypical household environments and face challenges in understanding their peers and getting their peers to understand them. Their challenges may result in difficulty adjusting socially, which is what Professor Regnerus discovered in his study. Far from seeing his research as insulting, I see it as affirming. For the first time in my 41 years of life, someone finally acknowledged that the way I grew up was hard and it wasn’t my fault.”

Do you think that gay, homosexual, or LGBT parents can raise children as effectively as heterosexual parents?

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Comments

How is it to grow up with gay or lesbian parents? This award-winning documentary shows the lives and thoughts of several teenagers growing up with two moms or two dads.Their life experiences have been very different because of the surroundings, as they and their parents candidly explain on camera while we get a glance of their everyday life.How do they talk about it with other kids? Which reactions do they have to face? Do they feel some kind of extra pressure? Are they gay themselves? watch on link below.http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/3206/Queer-Spawn

Isn't it a bit dishonest to say "oh yeah, the Texas university cleared him of academic wrong-doing" while neglecting to also say "but the journal he was published in, upon review, said the entire thing was bunk and it was a mistake to publish it".

And that Regnarus's study only included one person raised by lesbian parents that were actually together for the majority of their childhood? The majority were only "raised" by their gay parent for a small fraction of their childhood. Most of these people grew up, you should remember, during a time when being gay was almost an automatic reason to deny custody, was a reason to be kicked out of many jobs (still is in many states), and society was even more disapproving then it was now.

That is to say… most of the people in Regnarus's study weren't raised by gay parents. They might have *had* gay parents, but for various societal reasons they weren't raising them. Very different from children being raised by gay parents today where we can actually get married, legally adopt our children in half the states, and have more protections from discrimination.

The Regnerus study is "Bullshit" — and I put that in quotes because those are not my words. The journal Social Science Research which published the Regnerus paper conducted a thorough internal audit of the peer-review process in the case, including all the reviews and correspondence connected with the paper. According to the auditor, Regnerus's paper should never have been published. His assessment of it, in an interview, was concise: "It's bullshit." That's what he said — google it.

In the Regnerus study, only two subjects actually lived with a same-sex couple for their entire childhoods, and most subject never lived with lesbian or gay parents at all. So, any conclusion purporting to make some claim about children "raised by" a same-sex couple if complete and total crap.

The journal essentially has admitted dramatic failure in its handling of the peer review process and has retracted the paper.

The Regnerus study has been debunked as a fraud. It ONLY fetaures TWO same sex couples-only two. the others are one gay parent divorced from a straight parent-that has nothing to do with majority of gays rasing kids-majority want them , adopt them and are raisng them in healthy environment. Do not be fooled people. The christian post is bigoted and hateful. May they rot in hell.

Even Mark Regnerus himself has said that his study in no way concludes that gay parents cannot raise children as well as strait parents…why do Christian groups even use his study lol? the own head researcher says his study does not validate their points.

Mark Regnerus himself has said that his study in no way concludes that gay parents cannot raise children as well as strait parents…the own auditor admits that it never should have been published in the first place. Allen's study clearly had fundamental points that were based off of his speculations…obviously that's an issue. Neither study validates the points trying to be made by these Christian groups by any means.

I'm not gay or anti-Christian, but these people must be really desperate to pull out studies such as these to try to push their side through.